Grift

by Jason Mosberg

  “You already gave this speech, Jesse. And I already told you I don’t think that. I trust you. I know that you won’t hurt me. You can’t see the person I see. But I do.”

  “You’re wrong about me,” he says.

  Neither of us says anything. Thirty seconds later, Rob and Sophie pause their game of Guitar Hero and walk over towards the kitchen.

  Rob stops at us. Looks back and forth. “Who died?”

  At first, neither of us responds. The question goes unanswered like a high five left hanging.

  “Hello? Who died?” Rob asks again.

  “Nothing,” Jesse responds.

  “Nothing died?” Rob asks with a smirk on his face.

  “No one,” I add.

  Rob shrugs, then opens the fridge. He pulls out a 12-ounce glass bottle of Orange Crush.

  “No,” Sophie says as she joins him by the fridge. “That’s mine.”

  “I can’t have one soda?”

  “Not the last one.”

  “Fine, you can have it if you can reach it.” Rob holds the soda up in the air, and Sophie jumps up over and over again trying to reach it.

  Jesse and I both look on. Feigning amusement. Concealing the drama of our argument through fake smiles. For a moment, while Rob playfully holds the soda out of Sophie’s reach, I’m distracted from Jesse.

  Will Rob be a problem when Sophie gets a couple years older? Sophie, at 4’11”, hasn’t fully developed. For an older guy to try to hook up with her now, it would take a sick asshole like that tourist Zach. But within a year or two, Sophie will round out puberty. What he’s doing now is innocent, but will Rob’s intentions remain innocent down the line?

  Sophie keeps leaping. Reaching for the soda. I envy their playful argument. I wish Jesse and I could argue over a soda instead.

  Finally, Sophie stomps on Rob’s foot. Reflexively, he lowers his hands, and she yanks the soda back. Then returns it to its rightful resting place in the fridge.

  “You ain’t even gonna drink it now?”

  “I don’t want it now. I want it later.”

  Her eyes tell me that Sophie does want the soda now. But she’s not going to tell Rob the real reason she’s choosing to save the soda for another day.

  I used to let Sophie drink one soda every day, but after I read an article about how bad soda is for kids, I amended the rule to one soda per week.

  Rob grabs a Gatorade instead, and then he and Sophie go back over to their video game. Gatorade. As if he needs to replace his electrolytes after playing Guitar Hero.

  After a moment, Jesse whispers, “I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

  “I have to go. Max has work for me.”

  Jesse nods. He looks sad. There was always a connection between us. Now our connection is misery.

  With a purse full of fake chips, I’m off to the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Max has a grift for me.

  ***

  I return to the penthouse, my thoughts oscillating between the con I just pulled and the argument Jesse and I had before I left. Once inside, I immediately sense something is wrong.

  Max’s door sits wide open. Max never leaves his door open. When I run to the doorway, there he is. Strung out on the floor. His face bruised and bloody. Is he dead? But I don’t run over to check.

  Greater questions race through my mind. Scarier questions. I sprint out of the room. Towards the other end of the penthouse.

  “Sophie! Sophie!”

  I barge through her door.

  Hoping she’ll be sitting on her bed yelling at me to knock.

  But I find the room empty.

  “Sophie! Sophie!”

  Nothing in the room looks out of the ordinary. I run back towards Max’s room. As I pass through the main area, nothing looks off. What happened?

  Relief: Max has a pulse. He’s breathing. I pull out my cell phone to dial three digits. Right before I press send, Max stirs. I put the phone down.

  “Max! Max! Are you okay?”

  He doesn’t answer. But his eyes do start to flicker open.

  “Max, what happened?”

  He doesn’t respond. His eyes open completely for the first time. Eyes filled with terror.

  While waiting for him to regain his orientation, I notice the safe on the far side of the room. I might have looked at the safe a thousand times, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it in this condition.

  The safe is open. More than open, it’s empty. Max still isn’t clear-headed enough to talk, but I’m connecting dots. Someone must have robbed him. They have must have beaten him first. How did someone get inside the suite though? Dozens of other questions race through my mind, but they’re all trumped by two dominating uncertainties.

  Where is Sophie?

  Is she okay?

  I take Max’s hand. “Max, can you hear me?”

  “She’s gone…” He’s barely speaking. More of a murmur. Almost like he’s sleep talking. Or like how my mother used to talk when she was two lines higher than fucked up.

  “What?”

  “They took her. She’s gone, Piper.”

  “Who? Sophie? Max, is Sophie okay?”

  Max shakes his head. He nearly starts crying.

  “What happened?”

  “They came and made me open the safe. They took everything. They wanted more, and when I didn’t have it, they…they…”

  “What?! They what?”

  “They took her.”

  “Sophie?”

  He nods.

  “Who took her? Who?” This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. “Max, who took her?!?!”

  “They were wearing masks, but they must work for Charlie Moses. It’s gotta be Charlie Moses. No one else would… No one else could.”

  The panic begins to set in.

  Sophie.

  Kidnapped.

  The last few days I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, obsessing over the knot in my stomach as if it were the worst pain possible. Jesse not wanting to be with me sucked. But this?

  The worst I could imagine.

  My sister’s been kidnapped.

  Max sits up now. I give him a towel to put around his bleeding face. His nose looks broken. The swelling appears worse around his right eye, but the left eye doesn’t look great either.

  “Tell me everything.”

  He does. And when Mars, Rob, and Kim get home 45 minutes later, he recounts the entire incident for them as well.

  Sophie and Max were the only two at home. Sophie was in her room doing schoolwork, and Max was in the kitchen eating a snack. Three armed, masked men broke into the penthouse.

  “I lied to them at first. I said I was the only one home. But Sophie must’ve heard the commotion, ‘cause she wandered out to see what was going on,” explains Max.

  The three men forced Max to open his safe. They took all Max’s money.

  “I kept telling them that was all we had. But they were convinced there was more. And… that’s when they took Sophie.”

  Using a rag dowsed in what Max guessed was chloroform, they knocked her unconscious and put her in a duffel bag.

  A duffel bag?!?! My sister’s in a duffel bag?!?!

  They told Max they would give her back when he paid $10 million in cash. If they didn’t get the $10 million in five days, then Sophie would be killed. They gave him a prepaid phone and informed him they’d contact him in a couple days.

  As they went to take Sophie out of the suite, Max tried to fight back.

  “What did they do to you, Max?” asks Mars.

  “I tried. I tried… Piper, I’m sorry. I tried.” Tears run down Max’s face, picking up blood along the way as they get absorbed by the collar of his shirt.

  “What did they hit you with?” asks Kim.

  “One of ‘em had a gun. I think he hit me with the end of it. Twice.”

  “Definitely got ya more than twice, Max,” says Rob. “Must’ve been the third one that knocked ya out.”

  How is
this happening? One minute, I’m living this dream in Las Vegas, caught in a hyperreal, fantastic version of reality. The next, I’m facing down my worst fear. I hear about people feeling numb when they get tragic news, but numb is not what I feel; I envy numb. The thought of my poor sister in a duffel bag makes me sick to my stomach. Guilt, sorrow, fear, shame, misery, horror, and desperation collide in some awful game of emotional bumper cars. My soul feels crushed. And the only thing that keeps my heart from stopping and my body from crumbling into the dirt and dust that blows through this desert is the voice in my head that vows, “I will get you back, Sophie.”

  Rob interrupts the moment of silence when he mutters, “Can’t believe someone took her. That she’s a prisoner.”

  For the tenth time in the last few minutes, Kim covers her mouth with her left hand as if to smother the horror.

  A prisoner? The thought of my sister as a prisoner makes me ill.

  I run to the toilet. For a moment, I think there’s no avoiding it, so I stick my head over the white bowl. I dry heave a couple times. A comforting hand rests on my back. It’s Kim, standing behind me. She doesn’t say anything. Just stands behind me with a hand on my back. What can she say?

  My nausea has given way to a splitting headache the moment I return to the main room. As everyone tries to comfort me, I have what I imagine others would describe as a panic attack. It’s like that moment in a scary movie where you jump in your seat. Except instead of a fraction of a second of panic, the feeling persists for several minutes. I can’t stop my hands from shaking, and every time I try to speak I lose my train of thought.

  But then some internal part of me takes over. My mind starts to function again.

  “Charlie Moses,” I say out loud.

  The man behind the Las Vegas mob. That’s who Max believes is behind the robbery and kidnapping.

  “What makes you so sure it’s him?” I ask Max.

  “Charlie’s the only person bold enough to do this who knew where I lived. Who knew how successful I was.”

  “Well, he kidnapped that man’s wife a couple weeks ago,” says Kim.

  Max nods, then adds, “A couple years ago, his number two guy stole from him. So what did Charlie do? He kidnapped the man’s four-year-old son, held him ransom for the stolen cash.”

  “We have to call the police,” says Mars.

  Max nods. “Maybe we should.”

  For nearly half an hour, we grapple with the idea of calling the police. It’s the obvious first instinct. That’s what people do when something like this happens. They call the police.

  Max still looks conflicted, but he looks at me specifically and says, “I think we should call them.”

  Rob can’t believe Max’s decision. “They said they’d kill her if we went to the police. That’s what you said, Max.”

  “Let’s say we do go to the cops, what are the chances Charlie finds out?” I ask Max.

  “Charlie Moses has very strong ties to the LVPD. If we went to the police, there’s a good chance he could find out.”

  The mob controlled the casinos in old Las Vegas. These days, huge corporations control most of the casinos. And now, the LV mob operates more like any old mob in any old city. They control the criminal activity.

  Years ago, Charlie Moses’s family was nothing more than middle class. They owned a mid-size house and a couple lots out near the airport. The land wasn’t very expensive at the time because the noise of airplanes made it an undesirable place to live. But as Vegas exploded, McCarran International Airport needed to be expanded.

  Charlie Moses got a huge price for the house and lots. He took the money and bought a small casino. He improved it, then sold it for a large profit. Officially, that’s what he does. Buys and sells casinos.

  But unofficially, he runs the new Vegas mob. Nearly everybody doing anything illegal on a large scale in Vegas pays Charlie a fee, and he keeps them out of trouble. He’s got relationships with politicians, cops, lawyers, and even judges. The guy plays golf with the head of the Nevada Gaming Commission twice a month. Basically, if it goes through Vegas, it goes through Charlie.

  I saw Charlie Moses once. I wouldn’t have known if Max hadn’t pointed him out. It was three or four years ago. Max and I were pulling a con we nicknamed the Lost Rabbit. We were standing outside of the Mirage when a forty-year-old man walked by. He had two bodyguards with him. I remember Max looking at him with a combination of intrigue and fear.

  When Charlie Moses saw Max, he tipped his hat and said, “Hello, Max.” Max only offered a timid wave in reply.

  Later that day, I asked Max how a guy like Charlie Moses could have any power in modern day Las Vegas. Vegas used to be owned and run by mobsters. But that was years ago. Today, billionaires and corporations own the casinos. Stockholders own the casinos.

  So how could a mobster like Charlie Moses contend with the machinery of a corporation? Max gave one example. He said he was making it up, but I wondered if it was based on a real anecdote. Max said, suppose Charlie gets a hold of a photograph of a “happily married” CEO in bed with a prostitute. Now Charlie holds some sway over that CEO and therefore the whole corporation that might own five or six casinos in Las Vegas.

  When I asked him how having some control over a CEO or a corporation would help him, Max explained it could translate into money any number of ways. Suppose that corporation were going to build a new casino. They would need to hire a local construction company to do the building. Charlie leans on the CEO, gets them to hire his friend’s construction company, and his friend gives him a nice kickback.

  Charlie Moses, according to Max, didn’t inherit the mob. He built the 21st century Vegas mob himself. When he needed capital, he fixed a boxing match and bet heavily on the side he knew would win. The more capital he got, the more police officers and politicians he put on his payroll.

  Charlie Moses, the same mobster I once found intriguing, kidnapped my little sister.

  I think back on the kidnapping that was all over the news a couple weeks ago. When Murph’s wife went missing, the reason Max suspected Charlie Moses as the abductor was because of his desperation.

  “Max, you said before, Charlie Moses was desperate, right?” I ask.

  “Yeah. He was set on trying to build a little casino and contend with the legit entrepreneurs and business owners in Vegas. But it failed, and he lost nearly his whole fortune.”

  Menacing, calculated, powerful, and now desperate Charlie Moses.

  This is the man who has my sister. From everything I already knew about him, Charlie Moses is untouchable.

  “Well, if we can’t go to the police, maybe we can get’r back just us,” Rob says.

  “What?” responds Mars looking incredulous. “How the hell are we going to do that?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Do you have any idea where Charlie might be holding her?” I ask.

  “No,” Max replies. “I mean, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out where he lives. But he owns property all over the city. And who knows if he’s even keeping her at one of his places. She could just be in a hotel room. One of 150,000 hotel rooms.”

  “If we could somehow figure out where she was, could we even get her back?” asks Mars as he gesticulates wildly.

  Max sighs. Mulling it over. “Charlie Moses has dozens of bodyguards who are more like mercenaries.”

  Kim chimes in, “If we go after her and fail, they could kill us.”

  “Or her,” I add quietly.

  This all leads us to talk about our only viable way of getting Sophie back. Paying the ransom. Max says he had 4.75 million in the safe, but that’s gone.

  “But they’re asking for ten million…” says Kim.

  “I know. It doesn’t add up,” responds Max.

  “Why’d they expect you to have so much more? Can’t we just tell them that’s it?” I ask.

  “I told them, Pi. I told them over and over again. I swore that’s all I had. But they don’t believe me.”

/>   “Why?” asks Mars. “Why are they so sure there’s more?”

  “Rumors must have gotten to Charlie Moses. Something that gave him an inflated sense of our income.” After a pause, Max adds, “Charlie sees it as his town. Our success must have rubbed him the wrong way.”

  It makes sense. Charlie was struggling from a failed real estate endeavor, and he saw Max raking in the big bucks, living like a whale in the penthouse of Treasure Island.

  “Max, you’ve got to have more. You don’t have other money in a bank account or a safety deposit box? Something?”

  Max turns to me. “No. I’m sorry, Pi. Everything. It was in the safe.”

  I have $12,000. Between Mars, Kim, and Rob, they only have $8,000. I’m not surprised they don’t have more. As teenagers with few responsibilities, they don’t tend to save.

  “I have diamond earrings I could sell,” Kim says. “They’re worth a thousand.”

  She wants to help. But a thousand here and a thousand there will not get Sophie here.

  “It’s just not enough…we need…”

  “I know,” Kim says sadly.

  After another silent period of devastation that feels like some dismal version of group meditation, a thought sparks in my brain. The diamond earrings cause me to make the leap.

  “The jewels!” I shout.

  The light bulb in my head is enough to light up everyone’s eyes: the twelve million dollars in jewels!

  “When’s Ladislav coming?” Kim asks.

  Max pulls up the calendar on his phone. “He was supposed to get in late tomorrow night. But I don’t even know if he’s still coming. Or if we can get Piper in with him. He always has his girls lined up at least a week in advance.”

  Sure, those seem like potential problems, but what else are we going to do? “We have to try. This is our best shot!”

  “Okay, let me call my contacts at the escort services. I’ll see if he’s still scheduled to come in, and if he is, we’ll see if we can get Piper in with him.”

  I nod. “Make the calls then.”

  Max disappears into his room.